Pro-Iran group suspending attacks on U.S. troops
Kataeb Hezbollah takes a passive defense tact after warning from Washington
BAGHDAD (AFP) — A pro-Iran group in Iraq said Tuesday that it would halt its attacks on US troops, after Washington pledged a “very consequential” response to a drone attack that killed three of its soldiers.
“We announce the suspension of military and security operations against the occupation forces — in order to prevent embarrassment to the Iraqi government,” Kataeb Hezbollah wrote on its website.
The group urged its fighters to “use passive defense (temporarily), if any hostile American action occurs towards them.”
The United States blamed “radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq” for Sunday’s drone strike on a remote Jordanian desert border base.
The first American military deaths in an attack since the 7 October outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war have ratcheted up tensions between Washington and Tehran at the start of a US election year.
US President Joe Biden’s administration has stated that it does not want war with Iran — where officials have sought to distance themselves from the attack.
The president told reporters on Tuesday that he had made a decision on how to respond to the attack and warned he held Tehran responsible “in the sense that they’re supplying the weapons to the people who did it,” CNN reported.
But expressing the balancing act he faces in seeking to punish the perpetrators, downgrade their capabilities and restore deterrence, CNN quoted Biden as saying: “I don’t think we need a wider war in the Middle East. That’s not what I’m looking for.”
On Monday, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said that the Jordan attack had “the footprints of Kataeb Hezbollah,” which Washington has blamed for previous violence and which it classifies as “terrorists.”
US and coalition troops have been attacked at least 165 times since midOctober — 66 in Iraq, 98 in Syria and one in Jordan.
The majority of these attacks have been claimed by the “Islamic Resistance in Iraq.” It is a loose alliance of pro-Iran fighters which claims to defend Palestinians and calls for the withdrawal of the roughly 2,500 American troops in Iraq as part of an international anti-jihadist coalition.